


mapping the skies; a kaito character study

by cosmicpoet



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Character Study, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 19:24:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13130409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicpoet/pseuds/cosmicpoet
Summary: Kaito wakes up, and tries to fit himself into the person he needs to be for everyone else.





	mapping the skies; a kaito character study

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dodono](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dodono/gifts).



Kaito wakes early, before the morning announcement. He’s done this every day since he’s been trapped in the Ultimate Academy; it’s become his own little victory, as if he can’t start his day without it. The smallest things, in this place, seem to augment themselves into events of weighted importance - sometimes, all he can hold onto is knowing that he has the power to wake up without any external influence.

It’s this kind of stubbornness that leads his entire life. In his bathroom, he glares at himself in the mirror. He sees a mop of messy hair, tired eyes, and a frown. Contorting his face into a multitude of expressions, Kaito sees if he can catch his reflection off guard - to see if he can expose the falsities behind this killing game - but the mirror matches him perfectly. Angry, dissatisfied, and hurting, he smashes the mirror with his fist and watches as the glass and blood pools into his sink. This isn’t new, it happens every morning, and by nighttime, Monokuma has always replaced it with a new, unbroken one. If only the same could be done for his hands, torn up and bloody, the same as every morning. Still, he believes in the pain that he causes himself, and there’s a strange, sickening pride that swells in his chest as he bandages his knuckles once more.

He rips the bandages roughly over his skin, tearing fabric over exposed blood, letting it drip down into the sink, staining his fragmented reflection in the shards of broken mirror. Tightening his face into a scowl, he leaves the mess for someone else to deal with, and walks back into his bedroom. He tucks his feet under the edge of his bed and begins doing sit-ups, despite becoming out of breath within the first ten. Something is wrong - he knows this - but admitting it is like admitting that he’s doomed to live within the Ultimate Academy; and that’s not a possibility he’s ever ready to confront. With each ragged breath, and every sit up, he slams his back, hard, against the floor. It’s unnecessary for him to be so violent with himself, but he needs to prove to the air around him that he’s still in control. 

“Fucking…stupid…killing…game,” he exhales a different word every time he hits the ground, finally collapsing on his back, looking up at his ceiling like he’s trying to find the stars.

 _“If they want me to play the hero,”_ he thinks, _“then fine. I’ll play the damn hero. Shuichi needs an excuse to believe in himself, and Maki needs someone to believe in her. I have to stay alive for that.”_

It’s not that he particularly _hates_ the role he’s been pushed into - of course, some of his hero complex could be an unintentional projection of his own desires onto his place in the killing game - he just wishes that he could have some semblance of control over his own destiny. And then there’s the question of Shuichi; of how, really, underneath the façade, Kaito is _jealous_ of him - jealous of how he leads the class trials, jealous of how he can express his emotions without being weak. On the other end of the spectrum, there’s Maki, who’s so stoic that Kaito leaves himself confounded just trying to figure her out. He knows that there’s someone underneath, someone beautiful, gentle, and willing to love, but drawing her out of her shell is like sucking poison from a wound.

In the shower, he turns the heat up gradually, testing his own strength. If he can prove to himself that he can just withstand one degree hotter than he did yesterday, he can fool himself into thinking that he’s making progress in terms of his own strength. It’s ridiculous, he knows, but he’ll take whatever he can get and form it into a model of his twisted pride.

He’s barely two steps out of the shower before he’s curled up on the floor, coughing blood and cursing at nobody in particular. This is the life he’s doomed to live; trapped within a literal glass cage, blocked off from space by the mastermind and his own illness that’s slowly killing him. Opening up to Shuichi or Maki about his illness is impossible - he loves them _too much_ , and they rely on him _too much_. There’s no possible way he could tell them them without undoing the meticulous building up of their spirits that he’s put his whole heart into. So he coughs, and coughs, and wonders - at the back of his mind - if today is the day he will die. Does it really matter if his end comes at the edge of a rogue knife, or a burning, hacking fire in his chest?

But not today; he isn’t dying today. Today, he’s just pushing forward, for the sake of everybody but himself. It’s easier to get along with life if he doesn’t see himself as a person with needs - if he fits himself into the trope that this killing game is pushing him into, he can just become a vessel for everyone else to project their fears onto. He’ll be Kaito Momota; Luminary of the Stars; fearless and masculine, a picture of the ideal hero. And everyone will rely on him, so much so that they forget their fears and learn to become the best versions of themselves. Shuichi and Maki deserve that much, at least.

But as for Kaito - he doesn’t know what exactly to do with himself. So far, he’s been pushing down his own fears and problems, suppressing them by burying them so far inside him that they, if taken literally, could be the cause of his illness. Almost as if coughing up blood is his body’s way of purging itself of all the repressed anxiety that he hasn’t been dealing with. But at least Shuichi and Maki are okay - he tells himself this every morning. It’s his ritual; he’ll smash his mirror, slam his back against the hard ground, cough himself raw in the shower, and then, at the end of it, he’ll picture Shuichi and Maki’s faces in his mind. At this point, he’ll make sure he has no stray blood on his shirt, he’ll close his eyes, take a deep breath, and walk outside - ready to face them with a smile that doesn’t show the blood on his gums.

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas Dodo! Hope you enjoy this fic, since we were talking about defending Kaito's character :D


End file.
